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Salmon in Tasmania.

Literature of
Europe and
America.

tion, rich in manuscripts and some choice printed books, will form an appropriate nucleus."

The report of the "Salmon Commissioners " to the Governor of Tasmania is referred to on the 20th of November: "The attempt made to introduce the salmon into the rivers of Van

Diemen's Land has been completely successful. During the months of September and October, 1867, the swarm of young fish hatched from the ova sent out from England in 1866, comprising about 6,000 salmon and 900 salmon trout, were let out from their nursery and made their way down to the sea......It is impossible to lay down this Report without a feeling of admiration for the persevering endeavours by which these fish have been carried across the equator to colonize waters where none of the same species had ever existed."

On the 25th of December the Athenæum, in addition to its usual reviews, intelligence, and notices, contained a complete survey of the literature of Europe and America in 1869. These special and supplementary articles have since been continued annually.

On the same date it is announced that Girls admitted "Oxford has at length followed Cambridge in to Oxford admitting girls as candidates at the local examinations. aminations. The delegates require to be satisfied that a local committee of ladies will make all

local ex

necessary arrangements for conducting the examination with propriety, and bear the expenses incurred in providing suitable accommodation for candidates coming from a distance."

The obituary of 1869 includes Sir Henry Obituary of 1869. Ellis, Principal Librarian of the British Museum from 1827 to 1856. He received the honour of knighthood not in the English, but the Hanoverian order. "For some reason, the king was unwilling to create Ellis an English knight. Not liking to state his reasons for this unwillingness, he is said to have allowed Ellis to believe until the last moment that he was to be made a member of that illustrious order in which Bacon and Raleigh ranked. Then came the king's little pleasantry: Ellis knelt; William bestowed on him the Guelphic order, and went into his own apartments, rubbing his hands and chuckling, 'Ha, ha! I have made him a Knight of Hanover, a Knight of Hanover!' as though he had done an excessively clever thing."

Obituary notices also appeared of Mr. Charles Robert Weld, who was for about sixteen years assistant secretary of the Royal Society; Mr. William Ewart, the late member for the Dumfries Boroughs, who had taken an active part in the great fiscal measures which resulted in the cheap newspaper, and who associated his name yet

more closely with the movement in favour of free libraries in our populous towns; Sir Emerson Tennent; the Rev. Alexander Dyce, editor of Shakspeare, Peele, Greene, Webster, Marlowe, and other Elizabethan writers, and an intimate friend of Samuel Rogers, of whose 'Table-Talk' he made a collection; Mr. Peter Cunningham, author of 'The Story of Nell Gwynne,' a 'Life of Drummond of Hawthornden,' and 'Handbook of London,' and editor of several works of repute, such as 'Horace Walpole's Letters,' 'The Works of Oliver Goldsmith,' and 'The Songs of England and Scotland'; James Henthorn Todd, the Irish antiquary; William Jerdan, for many years editor of the Literary Gazette, who seized Bellingham, the assassin, in the lobby of the old House of Commons; Lady Duff Gordon, author of 'Letters from Egypt'; Dr. Waddington, Dean of Durham; Prof. Jukes, the geologist; General Perronet Thompson, for many years proprietor and editor of the Westminster Review, in which first appeared his celebrated Corn Law Catechism'; Mr. Thomas Watts, Keeper of the Printed Books at the British Museum, who classified and arranged all the books received into the library from 1838 to 1857, to the number of 400,000 volumes; Bernard Bolingbroke Woodward, librarian at Windsor Castle; John Bruce, editor of many works

of the Camden Society and Calendars of State Papers of the time of Charles I.; Alexander Ramsay, for five-and-thirty years the "friend and fellow labourer" of Charles Knight; and the Rev. William Harness, the friend and associate of Byron, Moore, Southey, and Wordsworth, whose society was courted abroad and at home, but who was content to remain the incumbent of a small proprietary chapel in the East-end of London, where he was earnest, liberal, and patient among the poor without regard to creed or politics. His last work was the preface to the letters of his lifelong friend Miss Mitford,

1870.

Peaceful prospect.

CHAPTER VII.

THE ATHENEUM, 1870-1872.

NEVER did a year open with a fairer prospect of peace than that of 1870. At home the great question was the education of the people, and on the 17th of February Mr. W. E. Forster introduced his Elementary Education Bill, while abroad there appeared to be no more exciting topic than the meetings of the Ecumenical Council summoned to Rome by the Pope to discuss the dogma of Papal Infallibility. The Times in its leader of Saturday, the 1st of January, stated:

"At no time since that memorable date when a virtual announcement of hostilities was implied in the 'compliments of the season' has the New Year broken upon a world more free from all immediate apprehension of international misunderstandings than it does this day. This may partly be owing to the fact that some of the most arduous questions left open by the treaties of 1815 -such as those of Italy, Hungary, and Germany-have been more or less permanently set at rest; but it is far more certainly due to the circumstance that all the European Powers are too intensely absorbed by the cares

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